Note 31

If there's any oI'm writing my college applications and if there's any one moment I'd love to talk about but it's probably not worth the hassle it's when I got bullied. I feel like it was such a huge part of why I am the way I am now, and it just feels wrong to not discuss it at least a bit. But i have no idea how to approach it. So, here's the raw unedited story, and maybe along the way I'll figure out how to use it :D

High school. A key few years in the life of a student. It decides a lot in terms of the next 8 or so years of your life. The university you attend, what you plan on studying, and in a way, your life after college as well, although perhaps not as much. Butterfly effect I suppose. But, going in as a 13 (14?) year old I didn't really understand this so the first semester I just cruised by. I was smart enough to get low A's without really any studying and the bare minimum effort when it came to homework so I wasn't really pressed about it. But it seemed the small number of friends I had made around me were already ahead and since I considered myself to be one of the smartest in my class, I decided the next semester would be better. And it was. I figured out how to study for the classes I was in and had very good scores. I even began to stop playing video games/watching video game streamers as much. I was growing up, even if it was just a little.

Then came sophomore year. You see, I was on the rowing team and after your first year on the team, you become a Varsity Rower. Cool name, but means little. It just means you're a part of the real team now. There, one senior decided to pick on me. Day after day. To be honest, at the time it didn't feel like I was getting bullied or mistreated. But I was. And now I could tell that my subconscious hated what was happening. I'd get poked, jabbed, hit, told to do things (not like inappropriate, well perhaps other than one incident i remember) and put simply made his "bitch". But on the surface, I went with it. I thought I was stronger than I was. As that fall semester went on, the habits I had formed my freshman year started to crack, eventually becoming rifts. My grades dropped, my addiction to video games had been reignited, and by the end of the semester I had thought about suicide once if not multiple times a day.

Yeah.

There was one night, when I just sat on the floor of my room, silently weeping, holding a knife. I think 13 reasons why (the television show on suicide) was popular around that time and so it felt like a lot of kids were suicidal. So that thought of being alone wasn't really on my mind. What stopped me was thinking about what would happen after I died. What my friends and family would think. What would happen. You see, if I'm going to be honest I think if I was dumber, I would've killed myself there. If my subconscious didn't bring up those thoughts, I think that would've been the end of my story. If I hated my family or if it was the other way around, that would've been the end...

Nowadays, I don't think I'm happy but it's not because of any one person or thing, it's my own drive to becoming that person I was at the end of my freshman year. Returning to that place where I had fun studying. It feels like this past year, I've come back around to the end of that fall semester freshman year. I'm just starting to figure things out, and I don't want that to stop. I don't know, maybe it's a bit of an abrupt end to the story. Sure, I'll go on.

The semester after, I came back to the rowing team after holding out for about a month. The bullying seemed to slow down purely because everyone realized that I was a valuable asset to the team, and losing me would mean a disaster of a season. I guess the couple of years following, I never really did figure out how to study again, especially with the addiction of video games weighing so heavily. And after applying and getting rejected to effectively all the colleges I applied to, I did a lot of introspection and came to the conclusion that this event in my life set me back about 3-4 years. Pretty significant portion of my life considering I'm only 20.

I got off track so I'm just going to end it here. Bye :)